How Ansible variables help with cloud provisioning efficiency

Ansible variables remove the need for creating individual playbooks for every provider, environment or region.

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One of the biggest challenges that DevOps teams face nowadays is efficient management of increasingly complex cloud environments. Over 62% of organisations currently use multicloud environments, while 18% are in the process of transitioning to multicloud. This makes the provisioning of cloud infrastructure more difficult, and nearly impossible to handle consistently without automation.

Thankfully, DevOps teams have been able to leverage infrastructure as code (IAC) tools like Ansible to significantly simplify cloud provisioning while enforcing consistency and limiting manual configuration workloads. Ansible uses “playbooks” written in human-readable YAML format to define and automate the provisioning and management of cloud infrastructure.

Aside from playbooks, another feature that makes Ansible so powerful is its use of variables. Variables allow teams to easily tweak configuration settings without modifying the core playbook. This press release will dive deeper into Ansible variables, explaining exactly how they enhance DevOps workflows.

In Ansible, each playbook consists of a series of tasks that automate the provisioning of cloud infrastructure. But what happens when you have many environments and cloud providers, each requiring unique configurations, instances and network settings? Thankfully, you don’t have to create multiple versions of the same playbook.

With variables, you can define these differences dynamically by storing environment-specific values in separate variable files (for example, azure.yml and aws.yml) and referencing them in your playbooks.

Now, instead of hardcoding values, your playbook.yml dynamically pulls the appropriate variables based on the target environment. With a single playbook, you can provision infrastructure across multiple cloud providers, regions and environments.

This is infinitely better than maintaining separate playbooks for each environment, as even slight inconsistencies will increase configuration drift and may lead to deployment failures, not to mention operational overhead and even potential security compromises.

Being exempt from maintaining several slightly different playbooks also greatly simplifies your configuration management. Ansible offers two directories (group_vars and host_vars) where you can store variables that define configurations for specific groups of hosts or individual hosts. These directories help structure variables in a way that keeps them organised, scalable and easy to manage.

Group_vars contains variable files that apply to entire groups of hosts. For example, if you have a group of web or database servers, you can define shared configurations for those hosts in a file within group_vars. Group variables help you achieve consistency across similar systems without duplicating configurations in each playbook.

Host_vars, on the other hand, deals with variables associated with individual hosts. For example, a specific server may require unique memory allocations. Keep in mind that these variables will override group-wide settings when applied to a specific host.

The benefit of host-level variables is that they give you flexibility to easily apply unique configurations without affecting the rest of the group.

Scaling infrastructure across multiple cloud providers presents a challenge for DevOps teams, as it’s nearly impossible to maintain a standardised approach.

While variables don’t make this problem go away completely, they offer a structured way to easily configure provider-specific settings like instance types, load balancing rules and autoscaling policies. By defining these settings as variables, DevOps can dynamically scale each environment depending on demands and provider capabilities.

This enables flexibility when it comes to what aspects of cloud infrastructure can be controlled through variables. For instance, autoscaling policies can be adjusted based on real-time demand, ensuring that resources are scaled up or down without manual intervention.

When implemented correctly, Ansible becomes a great way to boost collaboration and productivity among teams. The main benefit for DevOps teams is the clear distinction of responsibilities.

Developers can work on the playbook logic, defining automation tasks and execution flow. Meanwhile, ops and security teams can maintain the variables, focusing on environment-specific settings.

Different teams can maintain their own variable files for the resources they manage, ensuring there is little conflict when making updates or deploying changes. Imagine all teams working on the same playbooks at the same time. Teams would constantly overwrite each other’s settings, leading to inconsistencies, misconfigurations and deployment failures.

To maximise the collaboration benefits, it’s best to store variables in separate files and integrate them with a version control system like Git. Version control is a must-have, especially for large teams.

With cloud infrastructure becoming rapidly more advanced and complex, automating at least part of the DevOps workflow is no longer an option, but a necessity. Infrastructure as code tools like Ansible are integral for simplifying cloud deployments, especially in multicloud environments that require dynamic management. Ansible variables are key to simplifying provisioning processes, as they remove the need for creating individual playbooks for every provider, environment or region.